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Tampermonkey for Firefox released

The author of Tampermonkey, a popular script loader for Chromium-based web browsers, has released a beta port of the add-on for the Firefox web browser.

The browser extension is only compatible with Firefox 46 and newer at the time of writing (the current stable version of Firefox is version 44.0.1). If things go as planned, Firefox 46 will be released to the stable channel on April 19, 2016.

Tampermonkey is a userscript manager which makes the handling of userscripts easier after it has been installed.

Just like Greasemonkey, it will pick up installation requests on sites like Greasyfork that act as repositories for scripts.

Tampermonkey for Firefox

Tampermonkey displays a dialog when you click on an install link highlighting information about the script that you are about to install (taken from the script itself), a warning message about malicious scripts and their potential impact, the includes (the sites it will work on), and the source code of the script.

tampermonkey firefox

It is a good idea to review these before you hit the install button on the page to make sure the script is not malicious.

The script is added to the Firefox browser if you hit install. You manage all installed scripts using Tampermonkey. The extension lists each scripts in its interface and highlights information suich as the supported sites, version, features and links as well.

manage scripts

You may use the manager to remove scripts but also to leave comments or visit the script homepage on the Internet (if the information is provided).

Another option that you have is to edit a script directly using Tampermonkey. This can be useful if you want to change the supported sites, or change the code of a script directly.

New scripts can be added manually to Tampermonkey as well, for instance by copying and pasting script content into the editor, or writing a script from scratch.

The toolbar button the extension adds on installation lists several important information including the scripts that run on the active page.

tampermonkey interface

The interface opens with a serious delay currently but things like these are to be expected from a beta release, especially one that is released for a new add-on environment.

A comparison of the Chrome version of Tampermonkey with the newly released Firefox version shows that both share the same feature set with only minor differences.

The Chrome version offers better performance currently though, but that is likely going to change in the future.

Closing Words

The release of Tampermonkey for Firefox is a welcome addition even though it needs to be optimized to fix the performance issues that it ships with currently.

Now you: Do you use userscripts?

 

This article was first seen on ComTek's "TekBits" Technology News

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